Archive for May, 2015

Senator Graham from the backward state of South Carolina

Beware of the Mad Men who want to start a War with Iran

` Watching a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, now controlled by Republicans and chaired by the pugnacious militarist John McCain, the danger of having Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress becomes immediately clear. It is also clear that if John McCain was President just now, and Lindsay Graham in charge of this Committee, we would be in full preparation for an invasion of Iran that would resemble a repeat of the invasion of Iraq over a decade ago. This would be an unmitigated disaster! We should thank the gods that Barack Obama is in the Oval office, although the forces pushing him into increasingly belligerent stances are numerous, powerful and ubiquitous. The Republicans in Congress are developing a justification for a scenario that calls for permanent war.

One is forced to wonder whether the Republican warmongers actually believe all of the things they say, or they are using foreign conflicts – especially the struggle against the Islamic Jihadists – in order to build political support for a Republican takeover of the White House in 2016. What makes this situation so dangerous is that the struggle against the Islamic Jihadists – an armed radical movement that is reshaping the map of the Middle-East that has no connection to national states – is a real and present danger to the national security of the United States. Hence what we need is a cold objective analysis of events that is not colored by partisan ideological concerns. And that is not what I am hearing in Republican rhetoric or witnessing in their actions.

What I am hearing is an attempt to politicize intelligence in order to manufacture a justification to invade Iran, whom they have convinced themselves pose as great a danger to the US, if not greater, than ISIS. Every time an administration politicizes intelligence it has gone badly; the Vietnam War, the overthrow of the popularly elected President of Iran, Muhammad Mossedech in 1953, and the misbegotten invasion of Iraq are three poignant examples. We are still dealing with the consequences of our interventions in Iran and Iraq and there is no end in sight. Listening to Lindsay Graham lead his right-wing “expert” witnesses, who rather timidly agreed with the twisted view of political reality in the Islamic world he was presenting, I can see this nation slouching toward war with Iran – which I am convinced would be a tragic mistake.

It seems that a distorted Republican view of events in the Middle-East that serves to disguise the realities in the region has also gripped some Democrats. For instance we find Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a former military man, calling ISIS “the most evil organization in history.” This is a bizarre statement coming from a Jew who probably had family that was killed in the Nazi holocaust, since we can tell by his name that his family is of German origin. It is a measure of the extent to which many Senators have substituted hyperbole for objective analysis.

What is clear is that nobody knows what to do about ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shebob i.e the radical jihadist Islamic movement. Some of the suggested strategies are laughable and as misguided as the assumptions Republican strategist held about how easy it would be to prevail in Iraq before the invasion of that small Muslim country. For instance, the idea of arming various factions in the Islamic world, whether they are governmental or non-governmental armed forces, as the key to victory is extreme folly.

The other major delusion is that we can counter their commitment to radical Islamic theology by introducing them to the “American way of life;” which the Jihadists view as the values of a decadent, anti-Islamic, morally bankrupt, hypocritical, racist, Zionist outpost. Proponents of this conversion thesis forget the fact that the father of the modern Jihad, Sayeed Guthb, studied for a graduate degree in the US heartland and was horrified and repulsed by American society!

Hence there is no reason to believe that any sizable number of militant Jihadist are going to lay down their weapons on the belief that American society can offer them something better, especially when every time they turnaround they are witnessing mass demonstrations against white policemen for murdering unarmed black men on Al Jazeera! Many of the Jihadists look just like the murdered Afro-Americans; hence they identify with them and wonder “There but for the grace of God go I!”

Considering that the US has just been condemned for violating the Human rights of its citizens in a recent UN Resolution, for white Americans to think that they can win the young Jihadists over by painting rosy word pictures about the superiority of the American society is dangerous hubris. The Republicans appear to be especially vulnerable to these fantasies as they search for a road to war with Iran. But even more dangerous is their delusions about how the US can “win” the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a recent commentary in Al Jazeera America, Vietnam veteran Scott Beauchamp warns that we about to fall into the trap of believing the hype from Vietnam war revisionists. The chief spokesman for the revisionist view was that old B movie actor and corporate TV pitchman Ronnie Reagan, who convinced the post-Vietnam generation that the war could have been “won” except for a failure of will. Beauchamp tells us:

“The shifting goals and strategies not only betrayed the soldiers fighting in Vietnam, but also left a festering wound in the American psyche. By the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Hollywood were all too eager to address this lingering cynicism, what had come to be called “Vietnam Syndrome,” with a medicine that was equal parts mindless optimism and willful misremembering.

How Reagan went about recasting Vietnam as a ‘winnable’ war that was lost because of a lack of will, even a lack of faith in America itself, stands as a warning about how we remember our most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…Haunting the pretense for Vietnam was a conflation of American ideals and American security interests. The two are not the same. For some, that was one of the lessons of the war in Vietnam — without popular support and strategic clarity, foreign adventurism is doomed to failure. And if that was the lesson, then Vietnam was unwinnable. Imposing our own desiredpolitical structure on a sovereign nation of people whose culture was completely alien to policy makers didn’t offer the chance of victory.”

One need only listen to the leading questions and conclusions proffered by the reactionary Republican warmongering Senator Lindsay Graham to the “expert” witnesses testifying before the Senate committee, a procedure that as a lawyer Graham knows would not be permitted in a courtroom, to see that the Republicans are going down that same road.

From the arguments they make one gets the impression that their knowledge of history is so twisted by wishful thinking they don’t recognize that both the Islamic revolution in Iran and the birth of ISIS are direct results of misguided American interventions! They have obviously learned nothing from these disasters and are restrained in their self-destructive militaristic aims only by the presence of Barack Obama in the White House. Had any of his Republican challengers won, we would be in wars all over the Middle-East with no end in sight…and we would be on the verge of nuclear war with Russia.

It is in this light that President Obama must be judged, and he walks away with flying colors when the alternatives are considered. Anyone who is listening carefully to Republican rhetoric can harbor no doubt about the veracity of my prediction of permanent war everywhere if the GOP wins the Whitehouse and maintains control of both Houses of Congress. The war drums they are beating for Iran sounds supiciously like an echo of the drums they beat for Iraq. And with no pretense at originality, they are singing the same tune: Iran is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb and that poses an existential threat to the USA, so we must strike them first!

Never mind the fact that the best possible ally in the fight against ISIS is Iran, just as the best ally against Osama bin Laden after 9/11 was Sadam Hussein and the Iranian Ayatollahs, both of whom had their own reasons for wanting al Qaeda wiped out. The Republican warmongers have obviously refused to learn the lessons of these historical blunders and seems intent on repeating all of the mistakes of the Bushmen!

This is why those who suggest that we should sit out the 2016 election and let the chips fall where they may because the democrats have been unable to make all our dreams come true is either a fool, a charlatan, a paid agent provocateur of the reactionary right, or all three!

Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

May 27, 2012

Sweet Willie: Premiere Poet of the English Language

A Daring Discourse on Hip Hop and Shakespeare

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”

~William Shakespeare,Hamlet, Act 2, Sc. 2

There are so many treasures to be found on You Tube that I feel compelled to introduce some of these important videos to a wider audience by reviewing them and publishing the essay with a link to the video. The videos that interest me cover politics, sport and culture. And the subject of the video under review here is the relationship between the verse of William Shakespeare and the best Hip Hop bards.

The presenter in the video is an Afro-British poet and teacher named Akala, who is the guiding light of a unique cultural experiment that blends the works of William Shakespeare – which were written in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries – with that of 20th century American rappers, demonstrating the similarities between the esthetics and concerns of Shakespeare’s verse and the poetry that arose from Afro-American street bards in New York City during the 1970’s called Hip Hop or Rap, a cultural phenomenon that I witnessed and wrote about. I am also a published Shakespeare critic.

Hence it came as a pleasant surprise when I searched them out and read the mission statement of the London based Shakespeare and Hip Hop Company.

“Both hip –hop and Shakespeare’s theater represent energetic and inventive forms of expression. Both are full of poetry, word play and lyricism. Both deal with what it is to be human, and issues from people’s lives, and of course just like Shakespeare’s work, hip-hop is all about the rhythmic tension of words. The similarities between hip-hop music and Shakespeare’s theater are striking. As a media-savvy popular entertainer and talented businessman, we think hip-hop would have been Shakespeare’s thing – a truly old school Jay Z.”

Jay Z: Hip hop Poet and Super Entreprenuer

He turns street literature into lucre!

Jay Z and beautiful wife Byonce chillin at the apex of power

Rappin with fellow hip hop head Chilly B. Knowledge

Upon reading this I reflected on how my first, and most influential, teachers of Shakespeare’s texts – My aunt Rosa Morgan and Ms. Rosalie Gordon –would have reacted to such a claim. Knowing their reverence for the Bard I suspect that they would have been scandalized. But that is because all English teachers revered Shakespeare as something akin to a demi-god, a divinely inspired wizard of the word – written or spoken.

However the scholarship on Shakespeare has revealed that he was quite a down to earth fellow who held little in common with the pious prigs who are now the keepers of the Western canon – one imminent Yale literary scholar has declared “Shakespeare is the Western canon” – meaning the sacred texts of secular literature; those texts selected by the great scholars of Western literature as required reading in formal classes on English language and literature. Thus we can safely assume that many of the canonical sentries will be fairly alarmed by any suggestion of an affinity, a Sympatico between the verse of the Bard and the rhymes of rappers. In their view the former is high-brow poetry; the latter low brow doggerel….and it shall remain ever thus.

Yet The Bard might have liked hip hop as Akala suggests, for upon closer examination we find some fundamental differences between Shakespeare and those who now interpret his works. To begin with the guardians of the canon are all professional intellectuals, scholars trained by virtue of many years of rigorous university study, guided and tutored by imminent specialists in their field and terminating with the Doctor of Philosophy or PhD degree. Most of these professional academics know but little of actual life as it is lived by all levels of society, and they abhor business practices as a kind of amoral chicanery unworthy of one committed to the exalted life of the mind.

Their knowledge of the world is highly specialized, which has resulted in them knowing more and more about less and less. William Shakespeare was a very different animal. He wanted to know everything about the world and how human beings responded in different situations. That curiosity, along with his unique insights and literary genius, accounts for the fact that if one tries hard enough it is possible to find a Shakespeare quote for any human activity…he is more reliable than the Bible; which some students of the King James version believe he wrote.

The son of a leather tanner he learned early on about business practices, and the first lesson every businessperson everywhere must learn is that they must show a profit after paying vital expenses or they won’t be in business long. Without inherited wealth or rich patrons Shakespeare had to figure out how to make a living while he created his art or he would be forced to choose between writing and eating regularly. Evidently the starving artist mystique held no more romantic charms for him than for Jay Z. Literary scholar Leslie Fiedler ably examines Shakespeare’s attitude toward art and commerce in a brilliant and insightful essay titled “Literature and Lucre,” which is a chapter in his seminal book on the changing values and function of literature in Western culture What Was Literature?

The great insight that Fiedler’s text provided for me was his elucidation of how Shakespeare felt about making money from creating art. A practical man, he decided that since he was an actor and playwright he should own and manage his own theater. This decision had a profound impact on how the Bard viewed the purpose of his plays, which affected how he crafted them. His first concern was shared by every theater owner anywhere in the world: putting butts is seats until the room is full for every show.

The second major concern was to write compelling entertainments employing the Greek masks of tragedy and comedy, pathos and bathos that would satisfy the emotional needs of his customers who would then spread the word and keep them coming. Shakespeare understood well that a satisfied customer is one’s best advertisement. He was wearing two hats, businessman and artist, for him there was no contradiction between the aims of commerce and culture that pervades the thinking of so many creative people who think of themselves as fine artists, some of whom regard being commercial as a sign of artistic treason i.e. “selling out.” Although we are left to speculate about how good a businessman Shakespeare was, the texts he left to posterity testifies profoundly to his genius as a poet and dramatis – no one has ever done it better!

I have been fairly mesmerized by the writings of William Shakespeare ever since my Aunt Rosa, who taught English literature in high school when I was a boy, bade me listen to the music of his words. She said to me one day that the way to tell if you had written something well is to read it out loud because, she emphasized, “If a thing is well written it will read well out loud.” Then she picked up a copy of the Bard’s text and began to read it out loud while instructing me on how to listen. I fell in love with the iambic pentameter rhythms of his verse and it is a love that has lasted a lifetime.

My love of Shakespeare’s text soon led to a fascination with the spoken word; this enchantment was partially due to the fact that I suffered from a severe speech impediment in early childhood. And once I overcame it through the patient and loving guidance of my mother, my aunt Rosa drafted me onto her oratorical team, just as she had done with our parents a generation before.

It was during my tenure on the oratorical team under the stern tutelage of my aunt that I began to recite Shakespearian monologues. At the same time I was studying the Bard’s plays under the guidance of Mrs. Gordon, the daughter of college professors who held a degree in English Literature from Boston University, where she dated Countee Cullen, a budding poet at Harvard who hailed from Harlem, then a the most glamourous and accomplished black community in the world.

An actress at heart Ms. Gordon was an impassioned teacher of Shakespeare and when she read from Macbeth we could see the witches in the skies attempting to fill his head with avarice and ambition as he returned from battle. And when she read Lady Macbeth’s cold and calculating monologue bidding her husband to hurry home so that she could stoke those vile ambitions we sat riveted in our seats. I can still hear her even now, over half a century later – “Thine heart is too full of the milk of human kindness/ hie the hither / that I may chastise with the valor of my tongue/ all the that impedes thee from the golden round/ with which supernatural and metaphysical aid/ Hath doth crowned thee withal.” And we agonized with Lady MacBeth as she vainly struggled remove the blood of the murdered King Duncan from her hands: “Out Damned Spot!”

Hence I have had an ear for the rhythm of Sweet William’s verse since boyhood. My fascination with the Bard’s work was heightened when Joseph Papp, producer of the Shakespeare in the Park summer theater – where professional productions of Shakespeare’s plays could be seen at the Delacorte theater in Central Park – mounted a production of Othello. The play starred the Spanish actor Raoul Julia in the role of Othello, and this decision sparked a furious debate among New York theater critics. The essay in the august New York Times theater section “Looking Inside that Outsider: Othello the Moor,” caught my eye. What got my attention in particular is a claim by the Director of the Delacorte production, an Irishman named Joe Dowling, that Shakespeare didn’t intend for Othello to be a black man.

He speculated that this was a recent interpretation motivated by a tendency toward political correctness in the arts. And like most historical ignoramuses he went on to say that Shakespeare could not have intended for Othello to be black because there were no black men in Elizabethan England. However as the Caribbean scholar Edward Scobie tells us in his path-breaking book Black Britannia, there were many black people in England during Shakespeare’s time and cites a report of the Privy Council complaining to Queen Elizabeth about the growing numbers of “blackamoors” in her realm.

Scobie, who was a Professor at New York City College, pointed out that Shakespeare had more than a casual knowledge of the Blackamoors because he was madly in love with his black mistress named “Lucy Negro,” whose heart he stole from a British nobleman and who was described as black and beautiful and a superb actress with the Greys Inn’s Revels. Since I have already written and published an extensive treatise on the question of Shakespeare and race I shall not belabor it here. For those who wish to read my thoughts on the subject see: “Did Shakespeare Intend Othello to be Black: A Meditation on Blacks and the Bard,” in the anthology Othello: New Essays by Black Writers, Howard University Press.

The essay above was inspired by the discussion of Othello’s race in the New York Times article; it was my answer to their nonsense masquerading as authority. As it happens, just before the Othello production a troupe from the Royal National Shakespeare Theater visited New York and performed Macbeth.

It was a fabulous production staged in a massive old Gothic church on the posh East side of Manhattan, and the cast was all black. I thought it the most fabulous production of Shakespeare I had ever seen. I was bewitched by the cacophony of mellifluous voices spoken in exotic accents from all over the black world: Africa, Europe and the American diaspora.

It was a Pan-African production staffed by beautiful gifted thespians of earthen hues that conjured up strains from Duke Ellington’s tone poem Black, Brown and Beige Suite. I was so moved by their performance that I hurried to my computer and wrote a review, “Shakespeare in Living Color,” which was published on the cover page of the Arts section in the New York Village Voice, whose coverage of the Arts scene was unsurpassed in the 1990’s. For instance it was here that serious, literary, criticism of the growing hip hop phenomenon was born. With outstanding Afro-American writers like Barry Michael Cooper, Harry Allen, Greg Tate, Nelson George, Joan Morgan, Dream Hampton, et al. the Voice became the tribune of hip hop.

The reception that greeted the Macbeth review was such that I became known to the producer of the play, who arranged for some of the cast to come on my WBAI radio show one afternoon on their day off, and I had a ball reading Shakespeare with members of the Royal National Shakespeare Theater. I told them the story on air of how the great Afro-American actor Ira Aldridge – unquestionably one of the outstanding Shakespearian Tragedians of the 19th century and the most powerful Othello according to theater critics all across Europe who reviewed his performances – learned his craft at the Grove Theater, a black owned theater in Greenwich Village devoted to the performance of Shakespeare’s plays.

Alas, he was forced to flee to England in order to find a safe space to perform, because ignorant racist white thugs routinely attacked them for daring to perform Shakespeare. Aldridge would go on to become a sensation in Europe playing Othello and Aaron, Shakespeare’s two magnificent Moors in whom he invested virtue and vice, their dramatis personae symbolizing the extremes of good and evil. It was these experiences – meeting the black Shakespearians, writing about their performance, the controversy over Othello’s racial identity – that led me to write the extended treatise on Othello. At the time of my meeting with the black Shakespearians Aldridge was the only black actor with a chair in the Shakespeare memorial at Stratford Upon Avon, The Bard’s birthplace.

Ira Aldridge

The Greatest Othello of the 19th Century?

During this period I had an experience that began my enlightenment about the predicament of black artists in Britain. At the time I was writing regularly for the London Guardian – which was then the venerable Manchester Guardian – and when Senior Editor Alan Rushbridger visited New York, accompanied by a group of writers, I took my London colleagues to lunch at B Smiths, a first class restaurant located in the Broadway theater district owned by an Afro-American high fashion model. As one would expect, this was a smart and stylish crowd. The cuisine was superb and we were serenaded by a first rate Jazz trio as we dined.

The senior editor looked about the plush environs in wonder and then confided “There is no smart affluent black scene like this in London.” Although it struck me as odd, I was in no position to dispute him, considering that on a previous business trip to London when I was a boxing promoter I split my time hanging out with millionaire white businessmen at the Dorchester – which they assured me was London’s finest hotel – and black Jamaican gangsters in Brixton. (see: “On Being Black in London.”) And since I had never experienced anything but the warmest collegiality at the Guardian, my fail-safe racial bullshit detector was powered down. But when the editor went on to tell me how happy they were to have me writing for the Guardian because there were no black writers of my caliber in England, the flashers began to go off in my head and I could hear the warning voice saying “beware of bullshit tips!”

Although I had no evidence to dispute him I knew Rushbridger’s astonishing claim couldn’t possibly be true. A few days later my suspicions were confirmed. I was browsing through a book stall at the famous Papyrus book store, located right across the street from Columbia University, which is a great place to be if you are into used books, and I stumbled across a book titled “The Struggle For Black Arts in Britain.”

The book was an anthology composed of essays by a variety of writers, all of them black and residing in Britain. The English prose composition was finely crafted, innovative, and animated by a flash of Pan-African spirit; its polyrhythmic phrases seemed to dance off the page. I was stunned….how could such gifted writers be so ignored? They struck me as prophets without honor in their own land.

All of these memories were conjured up as I watched the lecture demonstration on the relationship between Shakespeare’s literary project and the concerns of hip-hop artists by the Afro-British poet Akala: spoken word artist, insightful intellectual, Shakespeare devotee, thespian and theatrical innovator. It is hard to imagine a more effective spokesman for this bold movement to combine the work of Shakespeare and hip hop artists in live performance to hip hop beats.

This is something really new, a genuine innovation, and they are not just floundering about trying anything, but are building a new genre of Rap performance that is extending the artistic ambitions of the form. They are about the business of establishing an original voice in the world of hip-hop, a dazzling new voice that combines verbal virtuosity with a deep knowledge of poetry, a celebration of lyrics that prize intellect and elevated notions about the role of the poet in contemporary society.

There are speakers who have much of importance to say but say it badly, and there are those who have nothing of real gravitas to say but say it so well that the can bewitch the crowd with the power of their oratory alone. Like being told to go to hell in such attractive language you actually look forward to taking the trip. One speaker puts the crowd to sleep from boredom as if they had been feed sleeping pills instead of words. The other entertains the crowd but teaches them nothing. In both instances the audience is cheated and little learning takes place. But there are special occasions when a speaker has something of value to say and says it well. That’s when we really learn something. Akala is that kind of teacher.

Akala

Innovative Rapper and Shakespeare Scholar

From the introduction of his subject of the commonalities of hip hop and Shakespeare, it was clear to me that Akala knew his stuff. One gets the impression that by now he has heard all of the objections of the naysayers who are offended by the comparisons and conducts a clever exercise that removes all doubt that he is on to something real and we are not about to be subjected to a display of buffoonery conducted by some barely literate special pleader who knows not the grave offense that he is perpetrating.

He tells the audience that he is going to recite some lines and form Shakespeare and some lines for US rappers, and although they were written over 400 years apart in different regions of the world he challenges the audiences to vote with a show of hands which lines were written by Shakespeare and which by rappers. Although I thought the idea preposterous I nevertheless sat up on the edge of my chair anxiously anticipating his recitations.

The first quote was “To destroy the beauty from which one came.” The second line was “Maybe its hatred I spew….maybe its food for the spirit.” The audience voted overwhelmingly that both lines were authored by Shakespeare, and since this was an audience nurtured on the texts of the Bard I knew they could not be easily deceived…but they were. The first lines were penned by Jay Z and the second were written by M&M. He then Recited lines from the Wu Tang Clan, and fooled the audience again.

That little demonstration made Akala’s point in a powerful way, the fact than nobody expected it made it all the more effective. The experience was like getting hit over the head with the truth; from that moment on he grabbed our attention and held it tight. The audience became so confused and intellectually intimidated that when he quoted lines authored by the Bard only half the audience got it right…and I didn’t do much better. It was a revelation….but Akala’s presentation goes much deeper.

He discussed the class structure that existed in England at the time, and pointed out that the country was rife with violent conflicts and 90% of Shakespeare’s audience was illiterate and explained that, like the rappers, Shakespeare’s art had to appeal to the untutored masses. Akala gave a remarkably cogent analysis of the origins of hip hop culture among the Afro-American population of New York City; cited the great innovators in the development of hip-hop like African Bambatta, D.J Red Alert, Kool Herc et al, and explained the African origins of the word “hip” a term Afro-Americans introduced into the English language.

Afrika Bambaataa

Bronx Bard and a Founding Father of Hip Hop

DJ Red Alert!

A Pioneering MC

Kool Herc

One of the Holy Trinity of Hip Hop

I had never heard of its connection with Africa, but serious students of Afro-American culture and speech have identified several words of African origin. What was most enlightening is how similar the meaning of the word is in African and Afro-American cultures. His discussion of rappers as latter day neo-African griots is also fascinating. Yet as impressive as the intellectual discourse is it is Akala’s performance as a spoken word artist/rapper that steals the show. The boy’s got skills big time!

Akala is a verbal virtuoso who spits out words like bullets from a machine gun. At one points he recites the Bard’s Sonnets over hip hop beats, and demonstrates the similarity between some rappers flows and Iambic pentameter, Sweet Willie’s favorite flow. This came as a surprise to me because I had always thought of the French playwright Moliere as having the most in common with modern day rappers by virtue of the fact that he told his stories in rhyme, as in his much celebrated play “The Misanthrope.”

After listening to Akala’s presentation one begins to understand why Professor Henry Louis Gates included the verse of rappers in his canon building Norton Anthology of Afro-American Literature, a move many intellectuals believed to be a sacrilegious act. So sit back in your favorite chair and check out this video; let Brother Akala take your mind on a fantastic journey. Among the surprising revelations this video unveils is the fantastic influence hip hop has had on the popular culture of the world. After all, this is an art invented by young working class blacks and Puerto Ricans with a compulsion to make music but were denied the opportunity to receive formal training in the art of music due to the severe cuts in funding for public education in New York City.

This is the result of pragmatic philistines who cannot distinguish between what students need to know in order to make a living, and what they must know in order to make a rich and satisfying life. In word and deed Akala testifies to the positive influence of hip hop on contemporary popular culture whose appeal flows over all borders. It is a bravura performance, unlike anything I have ever witnessed in a spoken word exhibition, and it is accompanied by an ongoing intellectual discourse which is distinguished by erudition and eloquence. Bravo!

Yo Rock! I should like to address your last statement first. You write: Let me repeat what I started off with: Playthell has taken a stance “that suggests Obnama is above critique”. THAT’S ALL I FUCKING SAID (until now). I stand by that statement. Sometimes we are too protective of those we love. I think one should tell loved ones when their breath stinks. West and Smiley are to be afforded their right to critique our first mulatto president.” My response is: I have written over 300 essays on Barack Obama and they are all on the Commentaries, but this conversation is critiquing Cornel West’s criticism of Obama. So you point is not only irrelevant but UNTRUE.

If you were a SERIOUS critic you would carefully search through my commentaries and critique the ones where you think I am wrong. But you are obviously too intellectually lazy to do that; you want me to lead you to specific commentaries which you say DON’T EXIST!!! Well don’t hold your breath because I have no intention of encouraging you in your intellectual slovenliness!!!!!

Anyone who has followed my work over the last thirty years on WBAI, Village Voice, my OP-ED columns in the New York Daily News, my features in The London Guardian and Sunday Times of London, my book on Dr. Dubois, etc knows that I CRITICIZE EVERYBODY!!!!! So you have NO IDEA what you are talking about. When it comes to assessing people who exercise power over our fates I am an honest referee.

However you fairly discredit yourself with me when you say America’s first “Mulatto President.” What tha fuck is that supposed to mean??? Are you aware that Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington were mulattos? Are you also aware that some of our greatest freedom fighters were MORE THAN ON HALF WHITE???????

Adam Clayton Powell and Walter White were Octoroons and Thurgood Marshall was a quadroon indistinguishable from whites!!!! Our greatest scholar Dr. WEB Dubois was a quadroon and our great historian Rayford Logan, who wrote the tragic story of the collapse of Reconstruction after the Civil War “The Betrayal of the Negro” couldn’t find ANY TRACE of African blood in his family tree!!!! You remind me of the 19th century Black Nationalist intellectual/activist/African Reemptionist Alexander Crummel who used to refer to Frederick Douglass as “That Mulatto Showman.” Your comment is equally absurd!

Barack is the same complexion as MUHAMMAD ALI, ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, MALCOLM X AND MY MOTHER!!! So fuck off with this kind of silly ass shit!!! Don’t ever step to me with some dumb stuff like this because it will make me lose RESPECT FOR YOU!!!!!! Being black in American is not a mater of color alone but a state of mind, a consciousness that comes from what Dr. Dubois call “life behind the veil,” it is identifying with a legacy of struggle against white supremacy. Tell me Rock, who do you think embodies that tradition best, Barack Obama or Clarence Thomas, Dr Ben Carson, Herman Cain and Dr. Alan Keyes??? I believe if these Sambos were mixed blood they wouldn’t identify with us at all, but Barack CHOSE to be black.

Barack and Ali: Two HeavyWeight Champs!

Is this Black enough for yo ass?

I say this because American race relations had changed so much by the time Barack came out of Harvard at the top of his class he could have easily passed himself off simply as an American of biracial lineage like the great classical pianist Andre Watts has done – especially since his father was NOT Afro-American, and lived very comfortably among white Americans today. But HE CHOSE TO BE WITH US INSTEAD…AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY SO!!!

Piano Virtuosso Andre Watts

The son of an AfroAmerican Father and Hungarian mother

I for one am very happy to have in in our ranks and couldn’t be happier if he were as black as Jack Johnson!!! Do you now recognize how fuckin stupid you sound to me??? I’d bet my bottom dollar that you probably are MORE MIXED BLOOD THAN OBAMA!!!!! Millions of Afro-Americans are mixtures of European, American Indian and African. Most often the African blood is the smallest percentage! Because I know much more about our history than you my views are based on much more substantial ground.

My views on Obama’s blackness are based on the following. The stories of him given by the black project dwellers in Chicago; he courted and won a fabulous brilliant black American wife who hails from the Afro-American working class who says she fell in love with him when she witnessed him speaking to a group of folks in the projects; the fact that he spent TWENTY YEARS SITTING AT HE FEET OF REVEREND WRIGHT which nearly cost him the presidency – and his comprehensive knowledge of Afro-American history and culture. THAT’S PLENTY BLACK ENOUGH FOR ME AND THERE IS NOBODY BLACKER THAN ME!!!!!!!!!

Do you think the fact that you were born black gives you some leg up on Barack? Well it doesn’t with me…I just named a list of highly educated Afro-Americans who appear to be as black as their African ancestors were when they steep off the boat onto American soil….and these Mofos are straight up traitors!!!! If they So get the fuck outta here with this color struck 19th century bullshit!!!!!

Who is “blacker” in the tradition?

Barack Welcoming Much Maligned Richard Sherman

Or deep dark Republican adversary Herman “Sugar” Cain

Mackin on Michelle Bachman ….an evil righwing bitch!

Drones and Detentions are the Right Tactics against the Jihadists

As regards President Obama’s tactics in fighting the global Jihad you proclaim: “I still support Obama: always have. My main critique has to do with his “drones” program, whereby thousands of innocent third-world people have been killed. The second has to do with the “rendition” program wherein thousands have been detained and denied their freedoms and human rights without due process and with flimsy (at best) evidence; the rest I will keep to myself until his term is over. I have deliberately chosen not to attack BO too much, given what he has been up against from Day One with these repugnicans.”

First, you sound as silly to me with the “due process” arguments as the cluless idiots that complained because Osama bin Laden was not read his Miranda rights before they shot his evil ass! So you want to see these people released because they didn’t get “due Process; just like the did Calph Ibrahim, the leader of ISIS, whom US forces oncehad in custody but released? And as regards holding off on constructive criticism of President Obama, well that’s where you and I differ. I am interested in what is the best policy for addressing specific problems without regard to the personalities making the policy. Hence if I think the President is wrong on policy questions I regard it as my solemn duty as a citizen/journalist to point that out and criticize those policies for the sake of our country NO MATTER WHAT THE REPUBLICANS SAY!!!! Indeed, you are far more GUILTY of the things that you accuse me of!!!

Now let us consider your criticism of Barack’s tactics in fighting the Jihadists, I have a few questions Rock. Your answers will tell us all we need to know about how you formulate your position on the use of drones. Your failure to provide a serious analysis will tell us even more! Do you believe that we are in a global war with Islamic Jihadists who spend their days and nights trying to devise a way of inflicting another attack on the US that will make 9-11 look like child’s play? Do you believe that their ultimate objective is to explode a nuclear device or high radiation “dirty bomb?”

Do you believe that this is a world-wide movement and if the US stops using drones human soldiers will have to do the job? Do you know that compared to the number of innocent civilians who were killed from “collateral damage” during armed assaults by soldiers on “search and destroy” missions render the number of such persons killed by drones STATISTICALLY ISIGNIFICANT??????

Do you know that there are 15 suitcase size nuclear bombs missing from the Russian arsenal and no one knows where they are? Do you have ANY IDEA what is required to protect a country this size where peopel can freely come and go as they like? Do you know know that the Jihadists who flew the lanes on 9/11 trained right here in the USA? Have you any idea how many terrorist “sleeper cells” are operative in the US today?

Are you aware that there are vocal and influential forces on the left and right who are so obsessed with their petty privacy that they are making in more difficult to detect these cells? Do you believe that if the Jihadist succeed in establishing ISIS they will not use it as a base to conduct Terrotists attacks all over the world…especially the US? Are you aware that they have state as much?

What do you know of their ideology and objectives? Do you know that if the Jihadist wanted to attack New York with a nuclear weapon they don’t have to land it on the docks; they can explode it aboard a ship in the harbor and level all five boroughs of NYC? DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS MEANS THAT THE BOMB MUST BE STOPPED AT THE POINT OF DEPARTURE???

Do you have ANY idea what kind of intelligence assets the US government must have in order to prevent this from happening? Are you aware that American covert actions based on electronically gathered intelligence have foiled scores of terrorist plots that the general public never hears about because it would expose intelligence gathering methods?

Have you ANY IDEA what that requires Rock? If you don’t know the answers to these problems, which require decisions upon which the fate of our nation rests, then you are a verbose ignoramus….and should STFU!!!!!! IT’S WAR DOG!!!!! I am prepared to prevent the Jihadists from realizing their goals BY ANY MEANS NECISSARY!!!!!!! HOW ABOUT YOU?????

It ought to be obvious by now that I regard your comments as the acme of absurdities, a glowing example of Facebook jibberish masquerading as serious thought. As a young man I served in the US Strategic Air Command, I served on a nuclear armed base whose mission was the nuclear destruction of the Soviet Union. That experience made a radical leftist out of me, but since I had a Top Secret Security Clearance and my unit was tasked with stopping Russian Saboteurs, I learned a LOT about security matters.

Alas, as far as I can see you have NO EXPERIENCE with such matters, and appear to know as much about the subject as a MULE KNOWS ABOUT PLAYING THE PIANO!!! Fortunately, in America anybody can frely express their opinions, but not all opinions carry equal weight…and yours is exceedingly lightweight on these questions.

Thus I anxiously await your answers to these questions Rock and I will promptly post them on the Commentaries and respond. However I believe you are all blow and no go; I don’t believe that you have the balls to attempt a serious reply to this intellectual assault! Now put up or SHUT UP!

The Struggle for Enlightenment Continues

Playthell G. Benjamin aka Publius Africanus

Harlem, New york

May 20th, 2015

Pretty Boy Floyd: Reigning Master of the “Sweet Science”

Money Mayweather and Pacman Cast their Fates in Vegas Ring

Tonight’s the night! The long awaited fight between Floyd “Money” Mayweather and Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao has finally arrived! Although it is not the “greatest fight ever” – or even the most popular, a point I shall demonstrate in an essay to be posted on Sunday – it is the biggest match in terms of purses and gross receipts. By that standard, which is the raison d’etre for prize fighting; this is unquestionably the biggest fight in history! With revenues predicted to rise as high as 400 million dollars it is predicted to break all records for a single event by a large margin.

Hence I believe that Mayweather, the greatest fight hype artist since Muhammad Ali – has played fight fans like a virtuoso violinist by making them believe that he is scared of Manny, and all of the haters are rushing to buy tickets in order to witness Mayweather suffer his first defeat. However they will be joined by true fight fans in the pay per view market along with the rich celebrities and plutocrats that will attend the live event.

Since everything that can be said about this fight has been said ad nauseum, and has by now become clichés, I shall simply address some mistakes that have become conventional wisdom among fight fans. Here is my take on the fight. In this matchup we have the possibility of a great fight in which theoretically anybody can win; although against Floyd Mayweather they seldom turn out to be the shootouts the hypemeisters predict.

This is because Mayweather is so good he usually figures out his opponent by the middle rounds and after that he makes they look like stumble bums! If we go by the numbers there is no doubt that Mayweather is “pound for pound” the greatest fighter of this moment in history and the best defensive boxer ever. According to Punch Stats, the computerized record that shows how often a fighter lands a punch compared to how many times they get hit, Floyd Mayweather is the most skilled pugilist EVER! That’s why his record is 47-0, and in boxing that is the only statistic that really matters.

After studying films of all his major fights I believe that Floyd Mayweather is such a slick defensive fighter that Pacquiao can’t hit him solidly with a hand full of rice!! Hence I am predicting that Floyd will give this Flip a boxing lesson and could well knock his cocky ass out…which would occasion a period of national mourning in the Philipines, where the entire population seems to be emotionally invested in the outcome of this fight.

Although it has somehow become conventional wisdom that Floyd can’t punch the record shows that he has knocked out over half of his opponents…and as many professional fighters have pointed out somebody who can’s punch could not have compiled such a record against world class fighters!

Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out to be a relatively easy fight for Money May. I have a very good record of picking big fights….the last time I missed was Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Marvelous Marvin Hagler. But I picked Leonard by a knockout against Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns, when all the boxing wise guys were putting their money on Hearns.

Hence when Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, predicts a knockout for his guy I think it is either because he is punch drunk from taking too many blows to the head during his undistinguished boxing career, or he is trying to get Floyd off his game by pissing him off before the fight because he knows that’s his fighter’s only chance at victory. I certainly do.

Much speculation has been offered about the reasons why Floyd has been so quiet as the fight approaches; the haters naturally argue that this is evidence of Floyd’s fear of steeping in the ring tonight with the Pacman but I think it is the quiet confidence of a fighter who has never lost a fight or been without a championship belt in 17 years!

This is the longest championship run in history. For most people the kind of brash confidence Floyd displays is a foreign feeling, never having absolutely mastered any challenging endeavor, but it is a commonplace attitude among those who have never lost in a competition against world class opponents. On the other hand Manny Pacquiao has suffered six defeats: three by knockouts! So I think all of his fat mouthin about knocking Floyd out is an attempt to psyche himself up!

Manny was knocked out cold by Jaun Manuel Marquez; put to sleep so thoroughly that his trainer and his wife feared that he was dead. That fight can be seen on You Tube. Conversely Floyd gave Marquez a boxing lesson, made him look like an amateur while coasting to an easy victory. I know all of the blather about how that is no predictor of the likely outcome of this match because “styles make fights,” but in this case the style points favor Floyd since Manny revealed that he is a sucker for the right hand counter – the punch that sent him to Dreamland – and Floyd is the best in the business at throwing the right hand counter punch! This is partially the reason why Marquez picked Mayweather in this fight…among others.

Marquez looked Confused at Times

Mayweather landed right hands at will as the fight progressed

Another myth about Mayweather is that he has trouble with lefthanders and Manny is a southpaw so he has an advantage going into the fight. Again this is a game of numbers and in this case Floyd’s won lost record is the most reliable evidence: he is 8-0 against southpaws. In support of their claim Floyd’s detractors point to the Zab Judah fight, but he beat Judah!

The only way one can make sense of such arguments, after we exclude the impassioned haters, is to recognize that Floyd is so good that fans expect him to shut all of his opponents out by winning every round! Hence if an opponent wins a round or even hits him with a good clean shot its big news! That’s why we keep hearing about Floyd having trouble with southpaws although he has never lost a fight to one and has dominated in points, averaging nine out of twelve rounds!

Hence Floyd’s “troubles” with lefthanders is wishful thinking, a contemporary myth that has been repeated so often by haters and dunderheads who understand but little of the art of pugilism that it has taken on a patina of reality. I believe that Floyd will neutralize Manny’s left hand by staying out of range with his superb lateral movement, and once he takes his measure he will begin to land right hand counterpunches and Manny will become gun shy and hesitate to throw it.

Manny employed his straight left repeatedly in victorious Rematch with Bradley

Another myth that has miraculously persisted in the face of contravening facts, like the political line of the Republican Party, is the belief that Floyd Mayweather is a runner who can only fight in the center of the ring, thus in order to beat him one needs to brawl and force him onto the ropes or in the corner. However a survey of the films of Floyd’s will so clearly reveal that this is such a gross error Stevie wonder can see it! The fact is that Floyd Mayweather is great fighting on the ropes and in the corners, when the brawlers attempt to maul him he treats them like Ali treated Foreman – one of the most devastating punchers in boxing history – he ropes the dopes!

The fact is the Floyd is as good fighting inside as outside, he does not have to run because he can stand right in front of these jokers and make them miss; he reminds me of the great Wilfredo Benitez in his defensive artistry…the Sweet Science indeed! While Mayweather’s fans have every reason to believe that their man’s superior boxing skills and ability to take a punch – as he demonstrated in the Shane Mosley fight and others – will insure victory, Pacquiao fans would be well advised to worry about Floyd’s right hand counterpunch.

Not only is Mayweather the smartest fighter in terms of ring intelligence, which enables him to analyze his opponents strategy and counter it, he can also punch! And he is the bigger stronger man. If Manny gets careless, as he is prone to do with his reckless way of raining punches, and leaves himself open to the straight right hand, it’s gonna be lights out! Hence, for these reasons and more, I am picking Mayweather either by a decision or a late round knockout. However if Manny really gets reckless and tries to knock Floyd out like he threatens to do, out he could get caught with a pin point power punch and go out early.